AT THE FRONT.
Some officers like putting up barbed wire, not so much, I think, from any real deep-seated affection for the stuff itself, or from any confidence in the protection it affords—its disintegration being one of the assumed preliminaries of an attack—as for the satisfaction of writing in the Weekly Work Report, "In front of X276 we put up 97 rolls of barbed wire; in front of S279, 342 rolls; in front of X276a, 3,692 rolls ..." and so on.
An officer who overdoes this sport of kings gets a trench a bad name; it becomes a trench with a great wiring tradition to be maintained. One of us took over a legacy from one of these barbarians last trip. H.Q. had got wind of his zeal and was determined that we for our part should not be idle. It was murmured in billets, it was whispered upon the pavé, that for the officer taking over B116 there was a great wiring toward. The officer taking over B116 hated wiring worse than bully beef. He said you either die of pneumonia through standing still pretending to supervise, or tire yourself to bits and earn the undying contempt of your party by pretending to take an active share in the game.
Howbeit he took over B116 and was told by the Next Man Up to wire to his heart's content. He asked the Next Man Up just where he wanted the wiring to be performed. The Next Man Up waved an airy arm in the direction of the Hun, and observed, "Out there, of course. Think we wanted you to wire Hampstead Heath?" Then the B116 officer took the N.M.U. to the parapet and showed him waving acres of high wire, low wire, loose wire, tight wire, thick wire, thin wire, two ply, three ply, and four ply, plain and barbed, running out and out into the dusk.
The N.M.U. gave it all a dispassionate sort of look, and merely said, "Oh, go out in front of all that. The Bosch is miles off just here."
Now B116 is a front line trench in a re-entrant. The Hun trench facing it is also in a re-entrant, the original front lines on both sides having been crumpled and flooded out of existence. So when night fell the officer of B116 took his party and set out, and he went on and on, and then on, and there was still wire. And he went on and on and on. And there were bits of old trenches and saps and listening posts, but still wire. And he went on and on and there were more bits of trench and more wire. And he went on and on—and I know this is true because he told me—and on and on until (no, he did not come back to our own trench, he had a compass) an exceptionally good lot of fireworks went up, and he was fired at and bombed by Germans behind and Germans in front and Germans on either side, and, mind you, he was still in the wire. So he waited until all the Germans appeared to have killed each other or gone to sleep, and brought his party laboriously back to B116, from which he sent to the Next Man Up a message which ran: "If you want me to wire Bosch third line, kindly arrange for artillery preparation."
It is some days now since they put up any wire in front of B116.
It is a fact well known to all our most widely-circulated photographic dailies that these German gunners waste a power of ammunition. The only criticism I have to make is that I wish they would waste it more carefully. The way they go strewing the stuff about round us is such that they're bound to hit someone or something before long. Still we have only two more days in, and they seldom give us more than ten thousand shells a day.
We are in billets now, and frankly, I am beginning to be very exercised about my boots. When I say "my boots" I mean rather the boots concerning me than "the boots that are mine." I wanted, some couple of months ago, a new pair of boots. I told the Quartermaster, and he looked at my then boots superciliously and said he could quite believe it.
I rashly left it at that, imagining something would happen. A man like a quartermaster, who rolls in boots, would, I felt, think nothing of sending along a dozen pairs before breakfast, with a chit telling me to give away what I couldn't use. But no. It seems every boot in his store was numbered.
I approached him again, and demanded boots, soberly, seriously and strenuously, I even offered to pay for them. This appeared to cheer him a little, and he murmured something about Army Form 247 x2b, not at present in stock, but indispensable to the issue of the most negligible boot on payment. My further efforts were, owing to exigencies of my military situation, conducted through emissaries. My servant would demand of his company agent nightly, what about them boots? And the company agent would reply—also nightly—that, if the officer would send his size down, the matter would be put through at once. For five nights running my size in boots went down with the empty water tins. On the last night I added a sketch of my feet and of my present boots, with scale of kilometres subjoined, a brief history of footgear in Flanders from pre-Cæsarian times to the present day, one piece of broken lace from the old boots, and anything else that struck me as likely to put the matter a little further through.
The lace appeared to put quite a new idea into their heads. The advance booting agent now seemed to think that if I had some boots already I might get the new pair by a process known as exchange, which takes less time and has the additional advantage of not costing anything. This struck them as an excellent new game for several days while they were deciding which was the right army form for an officer desirous of exchanging boots. At last all appeared fixed up. I came back into billets with every confidence of finding a couple of boots waiting for me on the mat. Of course I didn't really believe they would be there; I only had every confidence. Anyhow they were not.
This morning the Quartermaster called in person. He wanted to know what size I took in boots.
I expect now that the matter will be put through almost at once.